The summer vacation season is in full swing, and most citizens have already booked their trip long ago. Tourists from the Balkans, and therefore Bosnia and Herzegovina, generally do not have a dilemma when choosing a destination – they usually decide between Croatia, Greece and Turkey. However, in recent years there are more and more people who return from vacations in Turkey disappointed.
Well-known Australian blogger and travel vlogger Shayla, who runs a blog and social media called Travels with Shayla, publicly shared her unpleasant experience.
Although she booked, at least according to the description, a luxury vacation in a five-star resort near Alanya, her review was so negative that some Turkish media accused her of deliberately tarnishing the reputation of their country.
Here are what Shayla cited as the main reasons for her great disappointment and why she claims she will never return to the Turkish Riviera.
“All inclusive” like a golden cage
According to her, the Turkish concept of all inclusive hotels actually represents a kind of “golden cage”. The complexes, he says, are designed to completely separate guests from the rest of the country.
“When you leave the hotel, there are no charming streets or local cafes where you can drink coffee with the locals. You find yourself along a dusty highway surrounded by dozens of almost identical, huge concrete hotels. Everything seems artificial and made solely to extract money from tourists.”
Big food disappointment in a five star hotel
As a lover of gastronomy, she points out that the food was her biggest disappointment. Although the selection on the buffet was rich, the quality of the food, he claims, was very poor.
She noticed that the unused food from lunch was later served for dinner, reports Kurir.rs.
“What was dry chicken for lunch, becomes chicken in tomato sauce in the evening, and ends up in some cold salad the next morning. Everything was tasteless and too greasy.”
She added that the juices were simple syrups diluted with water, while the coffee from the machine tasted, according to her, of “warm water with the smell of plastic.”
Unpleasant experience outside the hotel
As she spent part of her vacation alone and part with a friend, she says that she experienced discomfort almost every time she left the hotel complex.
“If you just look at a product, the shopkeepers become extremely persistent. One man literally grabbed me by the upper arm and tried to drag me into his leather jacket shop. When I firmly told him to let me go, he started shouting at me in Turkish in front of everyone.”
She states that, as a woman, she felt like a “walking wallet”, but also as a target of constant jibes.
Dirty beach and crowded pools
Although the hotel advertised a “private sandy beach”, the reality, he claims, was completely different. The sand was mixed with construction gravel, and the deckchairs were placed so close together that she felt like she was sharing the space with complete strangers.
“There were cigarette butts and plastic cups everywhere that were blown by the wind because the staff didn’t come to clean up after thousands of guests. It was almost impossible to find a free sunbed at the pool if you didn’t get up at six in the morning and leave a towel.”
